A sign that Microsoft is becoming the world's biggest law firm

There was some distressing news buried in Sean Michael Kerner's look into Novell's and Microsoft's virtualization partnership. The news, however, had nothing to do with virtualization, and everything to do with Microsoft job titles.

This was a product announcement, yet Microsoft resorted to its legal department for quotations??? (Novell, of course, offered up a "senior product marketing manager." It has yet to become a licensing company, and is still focused on thriving as a software company.)

The two Microsoft employees quoted have bizarro job titles:

• Monty O'Kelley, technical director of legal and corporate affairs at Microsoft
• Brent Phillips, senior product manager for intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft

Every big company has a healthy-sized legal department. Microsoft? Well, if it's passing out job titles like this, I'm guessing it has run out of titles like "product marketing manager" and "developer" and is instead doing weird mash-ups between its engineering teams and legal.

When you have someone whose job it is to come up with "intellectual property and licensing products," you've lost your way. Most software companies focus on selling (gasp!) software. Not, apparently, Microsoft.

[cowatson]

"Well, if it's passing out job titles like this, I'm guessing it has run out of titles like "product marketing manager" and "developer" and is instead doing weird mash-ups between its engineering teams and legal."<br /><br />You know what they say, crap in one hand and guess in the other and see which one fills up first.

[rapier1]

The leaps of logic Asay make are truly astounding. He can lightly bound from one unconnected place to another without even a whisper of logical support. <br />"OMG! They have funny titles for their jobs. THIS MUST MEAN THAT THEY ARE DOOMED FOR FAILURE!"<br /><br />***?

[johnwest72]

STOP THE MADNESS!!! CNET, 90% of what this guy talks about is Microsoft. Remove him from your blog rolls! And yes, you may ask why I still read him. The problem is that I don't have a choice to filter him from my RSS reader. If I had a "Filter biased, anti-Microsoft guys who sell competing products (his company competes with Sharepoint... which explains the bias)" button, I'd use it!

[fredtheviking]

I don't about the other readers, but anti-microsoft baised is a sentiment felt by many who are forced to use Microsoft software. Either because there is nothing better or it is work related... and so on. No, Linux is not better. I have used Linux and would never use it for my personal computer. I do mean NEVER. The last I need is a comment about how great linux is. As all as you have the patience to learn if which I don't.

[mikalg]

Matt, you are stretching logic with the title/facts of your story! Dear God, why do you make a leap between a job title and whether a company is a software company and a legal firm? As you should already know, any law firm worth its salt should have among its officers an individual titled: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER. Therefore, by your asinine logic, the law firms of the United States should be correctly considered SOFTWARE, or COMPUTING companies? Your Anti-Microsoft soapbox is getting very rickety, and maybe you should steady yourself before making nonsensical blogs posts such as this. I have long considered you an MS bigot... but at least sometimes you had a point/factual if slanted point of view. This Blog story is simply put: non-credible vomit, that frankly means nothing to anyone with any sense whatsoever.

[TexasTWylite]

I worry more about companies that have some sort of "evangelist" position, as a lot of tech companies do. They make themselves sound like religious cults.

[john55440]

According to Hoover's, Microsoft has 91,000 employees. And the company is doomed to failure because you don't like two Microsoft Job Descriptions? Get Real.

[shikarishambu]

I fear for companies that have Matt As(s)ay on their rolls / allow him to publish

[benjaminstraight]

Now they are switching to the business of protection instead of development.

[softwaredesignengineer]

The title of this post has a lot of typo. <br /><br />Should read as "A sign that Matt Asay is becoming more and more irrelavent in terms of logic against at anything Microsoft"

[theopensourcerer]

Jeez you lot. Get real.<br /><br />Outside of the USA we aren't run by or beholden to lawyers. We think of them more like parasites... <br /><br />What Microsoft choose to do is their own business but AFAIC it's just a waste of money.